Tour de Force

by Christianna Brand

He looked again at the two faces: the rouge-patched face of a girl on the edge of hysteria, the composed, set face of a woman in physical pain, fighting the impact of emotional pain as well. For once in his lifetime, he did the decent thing. ‘Did you, Louli? I can’t say that I remember.’

  A breeze had, blown up, a little warm breeze coming in from the west, bringing the scent of the pine trees, dark and dusty under the afternoon sun. It swept back the heavy, forward-falling red hair and once again there was a glimpse of that face that Leo Rodd had seen the day before: the once gay face drained of all gaiety, the face that till now had never known sorrow, grown heavy and ugly with pain. She left the rail and went slowly away from them to the door of her room. Just inside the room, she turned. She said to Helen: ‘If you think this has only been a flirtation – you’re wrong.’

  ‘“Has been”?’ said Helen. ‘So you realize it’s over?’

  She was terrified; terrified at the implications of what, unconsciously, she had confessed. ‘It’s not over. You’ll soon find out – it’s not over at all.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Helen. ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’

  Mr Fernando was accustomed to scenes among his Odysseans, accustomed to pouring oil upon stormy seas. He said pacifically that they had all better wait until Mr Rodd came back. He looked like an owl, the yellow horn-rimmed sun-glasses ringing the bright eyes in the large round face.

  ‘Yes,’ said Louli. ‘You’ll wait, you’ll all wait and do nothing; but supposing he doesn’t come back?’

  ‘Now, now, Miss Barker, of course Mr Rodd comes back.’

  ‘Well I won’t wait,’ said Louli. ‘I’m going up to the palace. I’ll give him a few minutes longer, and then I’m going up to the palace. You may all be willing to let him sacrifice himself, but I’m not. I’m going up there.’

  ‘You’d much better stay away,’ said Helen. She looked rather anxiously at Cockrill; God knew what mess this silly, hysterical female would make of things, her look unequivocally said.

  ‘You can do no good at the palace,’ agreed Cockrill.

  ‘It’s better than staying doing nothing down here.’

  ‘Better for you perhaps,’ said Helen. ‘But not better for Leo. What can you do?’

  ‘I shall see the Grand Duke, that’s what I’ll do …’

  ‘You’ll never get anywhere near him,’ said Helen, impatiently. ‘And if you do, what on earth can you say to him?’

  Louvaine stared back into her face. ‘I can tell him the truth, Mrs Rodd.’

  ‘The truth,’ said Helen. ‘What truth?’

  ‘The truth. The truth that he’s gone up there to hide.’ She clutched at the lintel of the doorway with trembling hands, panic rose in her, a red mist rose before her eyes; she knew that what she was about to do was appalling, but she was driven forward by her own inward torment of terror and doubt, she was unable to stop herself. ‘Do you think I don’t know why he’s gone, do you think I don’t see now why he’s sacrificing himself? He knows, you see – he knows what I’ve known all along, he knows who the murderer was.’ She knew that she must not say it, she knew that the words should never be uttered, she knew that what she did was ignoble and yet she could not stifle the hatred in her soul against this woman who stood here, cold and sneering, a woman without heart, without warmth, without emotions, who yet could stand between herself and her love. She stared back into the cold, pale face: and screamed out suddenly: ‘He knew that it was – you!’

  They all stood very still. It was as though a motion picture had broken down and left them all standing there, each in his characteristic attitude – alert, sceptical, fascinated, aghast. Helen Rodd broke the spell. She said with chill contempt: ‘You must doubt very much that Leo really loves you: if you’re reduced to anything so – despicable – as this.’

  The desperate blue eyes fell before her own. ‘You think I’m using it to try to get you out of the way?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Helen.

  ‘If Leo comes safely back, I swear by all I hold sacred I shall not mention it again.’

  ‘You can never unsay what you’ve said in front of all these people.’

  ‘I’ve said nothing. If I happen to believe you’re the murderer, what’s that to do with them?’

  ‘It’s a great deal to do with me. I am not a murderer. I had no reason whatsoever to want to murder Miss Lane.’

  ‘I never thought for a moment,’ said Louli, ‘that you wanted to murder Miss Lane.’

  Silence again, up on the sunlit terrace; and that stillness – only the little warm breeze blowing in softly from over the scented pines. ‘It would be nice to know,’ said Helen Rodd, scornfully, ‘exactly what it is that you do think.’

  I must not say it, thought Louli. I must not say it. I’m saying it because I hate her, because I’m afraid of her, because I want to get her out of the way. I’m saying it for vile reasons, and if I say it now, God knows I’m damned for ever. But she said it. She said: ‘I think you wanted to kill – me. I think you went to the wrong room. I think you saw somebody that you thought was me.’ And she lifted up her arms, suddenly, and twisted her bright hair into a knot at the back of her head, sweeping it away from her face; and stood so for a moment and then released it. The red curls fell softly back round her face again.

  Mr Fernando screeched out, one curious, high-pitched, chopping-off train-whistle of a scream; and crossed himself and burst into a mutter of prayer. And Leo Rodd, coming cheerfully up the wooden steps with the Gerente at his heels, stopped short and said: ‘Good lord, Louvaine – except for the colour of your hair as you stood there just then – I’d have thought you were Vanda Lane.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Two cousins. Long, long ago, in the old hard-up, struggling days – two cousins, sharing a tiny flat: Louise Barr and Vanda Lane whose names had been woven at last into that lovely nom de guerre – Louvaine. Louvaine Barker: whose first brain child had been born in the long, sick, agonizing months of labour; to the cousin called – Vanda Lane.

  ‘She was always the clever one, the writing one,’ said Louli, explaining it all over again to Inspector Cockrill behind the closed shutters of her little room. ‘I was the gay one, I loved people and parties and going around, but she hated it, she only wanted to stay at home and scribble away at her precious book. And then the book was accepted and she had to go and see the publisher and she was petrified, she loathed it, she sat there as mum as a mouse feeling more and more certain that she was mucking up all her chances; and then there was a film of the book and they said that she must appear at the première …’

  And the arguments and the cajolements, the sick headaches, the sleepless nights, the despair, the dread … ‘Louise, I can’t, I won’t, everyone will talk to me and I shan’t be able to think of a word to say, I shall make a fool of myself, I shall probably be sick in front of everybody, from sheer nerves.’ And the reluctant climbing, at last, into the specially bought dress, the tentative dabs with unaccustomed make-up, a sudden piercing stench of singeing hair.… ‘There, that’s done it, now I really can’t go, thank God for that!’ And, close upon it, the breaking of the first glimmering dawn of the great inspiration. ‘Louise, you go, you can wear my dress, tell them I’m ill, tell them I’m dead, tell them you’re representing me, tell them – my God, Louise! – tell them you’re me!’

  ‘We were both really quite alike in those days, Inspector. We were the same height and about the same figure, we both had sort of mud-brown hair and, which was the real thing, our features were alike – a sort of family likeness, you know, not identical, but enough to make us now and again mistaken for one another by people who didn’t know us well. And of course the people in the film world didn’t know us at all, they’d seen her about once and me never, and the same applied to her publishers and any other people that were likely to be there. They’d all insisted that it was important for her to go, because of press photographs and publicity and so forth; and so we took a chance, and I went. I
did my hair like hers and I wore no make-up and I talked in a low voice and said hardly anything, and it worked like a charm. Only at the end, I couldn’t quite keep it up and I went a bit gay and made a few jokes and everybody muttered to each other that the Barker wasn’t too bad at all when she got a bit of drink in her and livened up, poor little thing …’

  Inspector Cockrill sat on her white-draped, four-poster catafalque of a bed and swung his short legs, absently knocking the ash from his cigarette with the nail of a nicotined finger. ‘And that was the beginning of it all?’

  ‘Well, yes. Because the next time, she naturally said, “You go again.” And it did make sense, because by that time I’d said things at the prèmiere which they might refer to and she wouldn’t know what it all meant; and anyway, however mildly, I’d gone and set a standard which she swore she couldn’t now live up to. Besides, she loathed it all and I adored it, and of course the joke of it made it all the more fun. So I let “Louvaine Barker” blossom out, sort of gradually, over the weeks and months and they all thought that with the increasing success of the book, it was natural enough that I should get more and more gay and begin to use make-up and break out into real clothes instead of mouse coats and skirts. Vanda was only too pleased; she said it increased the difference between us, in case we should ever be seen together and she more and more toned herself down and I more and more dyed my hair and had red nails and generally gayed myself up. Of course by then her writing was earning money, real money, and she paid for things.’

  ‘I see,’ said Cockie. His hands dangled between his knees, the smoke of his cigarette drifted up between brown fingers. ‘And you were content to accept that?’

  Louvaine sat with the legs of the wooden chair tilted till her bright head rested back against the wall. ‘Well, yes – why not? I made a little of the money myself: I used to do the odd bits and bobs, the reviews and articles – we can all write a bit in our family, it’s just one of those things; and of course I made money by just being around, picking up commissions for work and so on, let alone leaving her free to get on with her writing; and I gave up my job and stayed at home and worked as a general secretary – dogs – body, coping with the letters and the telephone. But that was only while we were still sharing flats.’

  ‘You separated?’

  ‘Yes.’ She tipped back the chair to its normal position and sat with her hands clasped on the little table before her. ‘We began to get worried about being discovered. Vanda worried more than I did. By that time she’d got a terrific following, the books meant a great deal to people, women especially: they used to write to her – they were attracted to some extent by her publicity, they thought it was wonderful that anyone who was outwardly worldly and gay, could write with so much depth and sincerity, could understand the problems of inarticulate people like themselves. If they’d ever found out that they were being deceived –’

  ‘That would have been the end of Miss Barker?’ said Cockie.

  She raised her head sharply. He had never seen her so grave, for a moment she seemed far away in another world. ‘It was much more than that. They’d really have minded. They looked on me as – actually as a friend.’

  ‘And they’d have felt cheated if they’d discovered that the friend wasn’t you at all?’

  ‘They’d have thought we’d been making fools of them.’

  ‘So you took it very seriously?’

  She shook off her absorption. ‘My dear, it would have been catastrophic. I mean, they used to write in and bare their souls! So we decided that we must be even more careful. We emphasized the differences between us more and more, she got more and more unobtrusive, I got more ob. We thought up all sorts of gags, we both learnt this eighteenth-century script stuff – everyone was writing books about it just then, so it came in quite naturally and so we could manage about our writing …’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I noticed she used it, in the blackmail book.’

  ‘… and then we thought we really ought not to share a home any more. Of course we had masses of money by then, we could afford to live as we liked.’

  ‘Miss Lane never grudged you your share?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Louli. ‘Never for a moment. We got it very business-like in the end; a percentage of her earnings by way of a salary for the work I did, which was quite a lot, and then expenses – the expenses were the biggest item: after all, I had to live as Louvaine Barker was expected to live. It was Vanda who insisted on it, I was representing her. And as for grudging it, she always said that she’d never have been where she was without me – which I think was true; and that she certainly couldn’t do without me now, which was also true. Anyway, she didn’t miss it – there was lots for two.’

  Cockrill thought back to the contents of the room in which she had died, to the Stiebel coat that had cost ‘fifty or sixty’, to the unobtrusive excellence of all her possessions. It was clear that in whatever luxury she had supported her alter ego, the true Louvaine Barker had had more than enough left over for herself. ‘And no doubt she would feel that you were being prevented from earning a living in some other way; you might even have written yourself, perhaps.’

  ‘Well, as to that I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘But you did the articles and reviews?’

  ‘Oh, well, those,’ she said. She shrugged them off. ‘I don’t call that writing.’

  He turned the cigarette in his brown fingers and looked down at its glowing tip. ‘I was just thinking of something you said to Mr Cecil – that evening down on the beach.’

  ‘Something I said? What something?’

  ‘Just something,’ he said. ‘It’s puzzled me all along. Well, never mind. You took separate flats. And then?’

  ‘And then we grew more and more careful about being seen together, or even appearing to know one another. It became – well, almost an obsession. Yes.’ She thought it over. ‘A game with me; an obsession with her. And the more elaborate the whole deception became, the more the danger grew. We just couldn’t take risks.’

  ‘Of being recognized?’

  ‘Of the likeness being recognized. Supposing a reporter, for example, had tumbled to what was happening.’

  ‘You were together all the time on this tour. Nobody noticed anything.’

  ‘Nobody was looking for anything,’ said Louli. She leaned forward across the small table, hands tightly clasped, blue eyes bright with the earnestness of her conviction. ‘In England, Louvaine Barker’s news; I never know when I’m being watched, when I’m being followed about – I don’t mean that I constantly am, but I never know. Wherever I’m recognized, people stare at me, they watch me, they talk about me. Magazine readers want to know about me, what does Louvaine Barker wear, what does Louvaine Barker eat, what does she read, what does she like, who does she know? Somebody notices that she knows one other girl particularly well, they spend a lot of time together; immediately that other girl becomes interesting, who is she, why are they friendly, how do they come to know one another? – she’s approached for interviews, tell us what you know about Louvaine Barker. And then – somebody notices the likeness. But here, you see nobody would be interested in the other girl: everyone would know that she was nobody special, just someone else on a tour: if a likeness was noted, it would be purest coincidence, in two casual acquaintances. And anyway, we never did appear to become too friendly: we hardly spoke, we never sat near one another if we could help it so that people could make comparisons, we more and more exaggerated the differences in our appearance, it was easier abroad where one can wear such a variety of clothes. You see, these tours were one of our ways of spending some time together. We simply had to keep up with what we were each doing, I had to know what she was writing, she had to know what I was saying – it needed really constant discussion. But we didn’t trust the telephone, it was too risky to put it all into writing, and anyway, as I say, discussion was part of it, and you’ve got to meet, to discuss. Of course we managed it quite a lot in England too:
we used to go very occasionally to each other’s flats, we used to stay in country hotels and meet outside and go for long walks; but, in the early summer, when Vanda was planning her new book, we got into the habit of coming abroad on these tours – we’d try to get rooms next to one another, and creep in silently at night and work and work and work, into the small hours …’

  Inspector Cockrill recalled Vanda Lane’s inexplicable preference for room number five, following Louvaine’s apparently casual choice of number four. He reflected, however, that the ladies had done very little night work on the present tour: thanks to Leo Rodd.

  And Leo Rodd. ‘Did Mr Rodd know about all this? What was to happen if either of you married?’

  ‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘we’d simply have told our husbands, I suppose. What had they got to lose? – they’d just have accepted it. I hadn’t told Leo, because it was Vanda’s secret too; but I would have. He wouldn’t have cared.’

  He thought again over that odd remark, down on the beach that evening. But he put the thought aside. ‘And your families? What had you told them?’

  She shrugged. ‘They believed what everyone else believed. I told my mother and father, under oaths of secrecy; but – I don’t know – we’ve both rather grown away from home since all this began. Vanda told her father, but he’s dead now. Her mother – well, she was away, she was ill.’

  ‘She never told her own mother?’

  ‘Her mother was away,’ insisted Louvaine.

  ‘What, away in hospital? All these years?’

  She said rather defensively: ‘It’s a sort of hospital. She’s always there. She’s – incurable.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. It accounted perhaps for odd things in Vanda Lane’s character. The exaggerated dread of meeting strange people which had led her to sacrifice her very identity as a famous and much loved writer, the entire absorption in her work, the anxiety complex which had obviously arisen about keeping the secret of the change of identities. Certainly, once started, it would have seemed imperative to keep the deception alive, and Louvaine had evidently herself agreed wholeheartedly in going to the lengths they did; but with her it had been ‘a sort of game’; with Vanda it had been an obsession.